Leonard Warburton Matters (26 June 1881 – 31 October 1951) was an Australian journalist who became a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.

Personal life

He was born a

British subject The term "British subject" has several different meanings depending on the time period. Before 1949, it referred to almost all subjects of the British Empire (including the United Kingdom, Dominions, and colonies, but excluding protectorates ...

Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...

, in the Province of South Australia to parents John Leonard Matters and Emma Alma Matters (née Warburton). He is the brother to Australian-British suffragist

Muriel Matters Muriel Lilah Matters (12 November 1877 – 17 November 1969) also known as Muriel Matters-Porter, was an Australian-born suffragist, lecturer, journalist, educator, actress and elocutionist. Based in Britain from 1905 until her death, Matters i ...

. Matters was married twice. In 1911 Matters married Emilie Mary Domela (formerly Nettle), the widow of Ferdinand Jacobus Domela Nieuwenhuis Jr, who was the son of prominent Dutch Socialist

Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis Ferdinand Jacobus Domela Nieuwenhuis (31 December 1846 – 18 November 1919) was a Dutch socialist politician and later a social anarchist and anti-militarist. He was a Lutheran preacher who, after he lost his faith, started a political figh ...

; Emilie was a published author in her own right under the name 'Egeria', with her most prominent work being her 1913 work ''Australasians who count in London and who counts in Western Australia''. Following the death of his first wife, Emilie in 1939, Matters married Romana Kryszek a Polish national who had been living in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. Matters had two children with his first wife Emilie: * Daughter: Mary Lenore Dunseith (née Matters) * Step-Daughter: Emilie 'Topsy' Johanna Herbert (née Domela).

Career

Matters pursued career as a journalist and writer, holding posts around the world, before finally settling in the United Kingdom. Matters wrote booklength works about the development of the Arctic trade routes in Siberia and Jack the Ripper. In 1926, Matters proposed in a magazine article that the notorious serial killer

Jack the Ripper Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer who was active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also ...

was an eminent doctor, whose son had died from

syphilis Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms depend on the stage it presents: primary, secondary, latent syphilis, latent or tertiary. The prim ...

caught from a prostitute. According to Matters, the doctor, given the pseudonym "Dr Stanley", committed the murders in revenge and then fled to Argentina. Matters claimed he had discovered an account of Stanley's deathbed confession in a South American newspaper. He expanded his ideas into a book, ''The Mystery of Jack the Ripper'', in 1929. The book was marketed as a serious study, but it contains obvious factual errors and the documents it supposedly uses as references have never been found. True crime writer Edmund Pearson, who was Matters' contemporary, said scathingly, "The deathbed confession bears about the same relation to the facts of criminology as the exploits of Peter Rabbit and Jerry Muskrat do to zoology." Ripper expert and former policeman Donald Rumbelow thought the theory was "almost certainly invented", and Stephen Knight, who wrote '' Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution'', thought it was "based on unsupported and palpably false statements". Nevertheless, ''The Mystery of Jack the Ripper'' was the first full-length book on the Ripper, and it inspired further fictional works such as the theatre play ''Murder Most Foul'' and the film ''

''.

Military service

On 28 January 1901, Matters enlisted in the Australian and Colonial Military Forces in the 5th South Australian Imperial Bushmen at the rank of Trooper. Leonard Matters

The image of Matters on horseback while on active duty was reproduced in a commemorative medallion produced by the

Perth Mint The Perth Mint is Australia's official bullion mint and wholly owned by the Government of Western Australia. Established on 20 June 1899, two years before Australia's Federation in 1901, the Perth Mint was the last of three Australian colonia ...

in 2003 for their ‘Australians at War’ series.

Political career

Matters early life and career influenced his alignment with the political plight of the working classes. During the

1924 UK General Election The 1924 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 29 October 1924, as a result of the defeat of the Labour minority government, led by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, in the House of Commons on a motion of no confidence. It was th ...

, he was the Labour Party campaign manager for the constituency of

Hastings Hastings ( ) is a seaside town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to th ...

, where his sister

was running as the candidate. In the 1929 general election, Matters was elected to the United Kingdom

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of ...

as the Labour Party member of parliament (MP) for

Kennington Kennington is a district in south London, England. It is mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, running along the boundary with the London Borough of Southwark, a boundary which can be discerned from the early medieval period between th ...

in London. Matters held the seat for two years, until his defeat at the 1931 general election, and a second unsuccessfully attempt at the

1935 Events January * January 7 – Italian premier Benito Mussolini and French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval conclude an agreement, in which each power agrees not to oppose the other's colonial claims. * January 12 – Amelia Earhart ...

References

External links